Episode 13: HEADS OR TAILS | DURRUN by Aito Kitazaki

Episode 13

Picking up the instant Episode 12 ends, a black-panel flashback shows the day Kaori Yabi took the codename Kikyou and joined TW18. Told that once a monster, always a monster, she accepted the price — not for ambition, but for resolve. In the present Yu-ri sees what she is, and covers a slip that almost gives away a second Fuser. Her answer is the law: a barrier against the Ash of Nue, because a monster that breaks order needs a greater monster to stop it. Yu-ri says he agrees, then attacks. Her right hand detaches, hangs him by the throat on nylon lines, then launches from range with one of her twin swords to strike his blind side. He rates her far above Soujun, the brute Fuser he fought in Episode 2. Ten answers for him: Karakasa-kozou flings her skyward, Ittan-momen reaches to bind her — but she slips it in midair, the same trick as her hand. What she will not let go is one word. He said he agreed. She floats a sword overhead and offers to stand down, depending on his answer. What surfaces instead is a memory: Sonny Griffin telling his six-year-old son to die for TOKYO as he throws him off a cliff. Yu-ri roars, never sees the sword falling behind him, and Ten shields him unbidden, cut open in its thin Ittan-momen form. A weapon with a will, Kikyou calls it. She names the two roads to power in TOKYO: the Ash of Nue, and a thing so vile she will not speak it. Yu-ri speaks it for her. MATOU — and the one man who holds both. Sonny Griffin.